5 COLLEGE HOCKEY PLAYERS WON'T BE ON WHEATIES BOX

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Wheaties may be the "breakfast of champions," but five women on the Olympic champion hockey team won't get to see their faces on the box. That's because five of the gold medalists are still in college, and under NCAA rules they cannot accept commercial sponsorships if they want to continue their college hockey careers.

Fifteen other members of the U.S. women's hockey team will be on the box, but those excluded by the NCAA rules are Tara Mounsey, Sara DeCosta, A.J. Mleczko, Angela Ruggiero and Jenny Schmidgall.

"It's a rule, and we were aware of it coming into this. But it's a bummer. It would be kind of a cool thing," Mounsey told her hometown newspaper, the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, as she watched 15 of her teammates step on stage in Nagano, Japan, for the Wheaties box announcement.

Even though the members of the team won't necessarily make money from being on the Wheaties box, NCAA rules prohibit college athletes from allowing their photos or names to be used for financial gain by someone else.